Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

Two kids (ages 12 and 15) have expressed interest in learning web dev.

I was going to set them up with a starter project on https://glitch.com containing an index.html that demos the various html elements. I'd let them fiddle around with that for a bit, and then they choose a topic they're interested in and we'd build a small site about it.

I'm not mentioning css until they ask "How do I make it look nice?" and probably not mentioning js at all for now.

Does that seem like a decent approach? How would or how have you done it?

https://www.freecodecamp.org/ has been pretty effective for some of my adult friends. Might be worth a try for kids too

IDK… how about having them take a screenshot of their favorite website, then use GPT-4V to prompt and generate some boilerplate, then use VS Code Live Server extension to render the page. Illustrate how the HTML/CSS affect the web page.

Could be a fun on-ramp to get them excited. Have to be careful giving them AI at the start, but who knows! It might be THE way to go.

Do newbies start with notepad++ and a LAMP stack or VS Code and ChatGPT!? Feels like it’s up in the air right now.

Don't teach them 1997 web dev. Get them a React Udemy course or similar.

I would start by sitting down with them and showing them.

Pretend your kids are the most important thing in your life and prioritize their growth because your time with them is precious and cannot be gotten back and it will be gone in a few fleeting days.

Maybe the web development sticks. Maybe it doesn’t. Neither is the important thing.

Anyway show them css because it is a way of taking them seriously. And because it means you’re putting in the work not phoning it in.

No excuses. No sending a link.

Good luck.